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    SubjectRe: CML2 design philosophy heads-up
    Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com> wrote:
    > Arjan van de Ven <arjanv@redhat.com>:
    > > Aunt Tillie doesn't even know what a kernel is, nor does she want
    > > to. I think it's fair to assume that people who configure and
    > > compile their own kernel (as opposed to using the distribution
    > > supplied ones) know what they are doing.
    >
    > I'd like to break these assumptions. Or at the very least see how far
    > they can be bent. I know this sounds crazy to a lot of hackers, but
    > I think there's a certain amount of unhelpful elitism and self-puffery
    > in the "kernels are hard to configure and they *should* be hard to
    > configure* attitude. Let's give Aunt Tillie a chance to surprise us.

    Whether this is desirable or not is debatable. The big question is: why on
    earth would Aunt Tillie _want_ to compile a kernel at all, let alone
    re-configure one? If she's using Linux, she's installing her distribution's
    pre-compiled kernel, and has no need for anything else.

    Simplifying the configuration interface so that "anyone" can use it seems like
    a waste of effort. If there's an interested novice out there who wants to
    learn how to configure a kernel, they'll be sufficiently interested to invest
    an hour or two in learning how the whole process works. Make it as simple as
    it needs to be, and no simpler.

    Charles
    --
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------
    Charles Cazabon <linux@discworld.dyndns.org>
    GPL'ed software available at: http://www.qcc.sk.ca/~charlesc/software/
    Any opinions expressed are just that -- my opinions.
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